Windows 10 stop codes

In order to resolve a Stop code, you have to know what's causing it.

Start by telling us what Stop codes you are seeing. It's even more helpful if you can also provide the name of the error, which LOOKS_LIKE_THIS.

If you weren't able to catch the Stop code or the error name when it appeared, you can usually find it in Event Viewer. But in that case you need to be careful: Event Viewer, by design, records everything that happens, whether or not it matters. Thus, when looking for errors in Event Viewer, you must know the exact time you saw the error. Otherwise you might choose the wrong event.

In addition to knowing the error code and its name, it's also very helpful if you can remember what the computer was doing at the time the error occurred.

All this will provide enough information to begin an educated guessing game - that's really what it is. Error codes and/or names rarely identify the specific cause for an error, but they provide enough information to take a good guess at it. The more information you can provide about an error, the better are your chances for receiving the right guess.

Hi and thanks for reaching out. My name is Bernard a Windows fan like you. I'll be happy to help you out today.

I understand the issue you have, nothing to worry I am here to help, and just to confirm can you still use the affected device? if so, we need to analyze the error, can you please check if you have minidump files on the PC so that we can further examine what is the root cause of the issue?

Press Windows key + E (To open file explorer)

Click "This PC" > then follow the file path:

C:\Windows\Minidump

Copy the Minidump files and save them to another location like Desktop or Documents.

Then please upload it to Cloud storage and please share the shareable link here.

Let me know how it goes and I hope that helps.

Bernard

Independent Advisor

Hi Bernard,

Thanks for the reply.

I read the web page you listed, and of the 6 items on it, using restore looks the best; the others don't seem to apply (event not happening on power up, have not changed the PC hardware config, I run Defender+off-line scan once a week and last was the day before the events began, last time an external drive was attached was duting system backup 3 weeks ago, and I don't have a graphics adapter installed: supposedly the m/b graphics drovers are up-to-date).

Attached is a cclean screenshot: 2 restore point items the day before the events highlighted, and I think one of those 2 - possibly the PC health check item - is the cause. But in any event, restore to the 15th is what I plan to do

As you can see, several available (the auto ones are scripted for very monday morning).

HOWEVER

I cannot seem to find the stored restore points using win10 safe mode - lots of poking around trying to find them, and several stops doing that and composing this post. There's a create button but nothing in it seems relevant. Can you suggest how to find a restore point under win10 safe mode? Or can it be done safely in a normal boot?

Hi Bernard,

Yes, I can still use the the device (a system build desktop) but it doesn't qualify for win11: wrong processor type, and the m/b manufacturer (gigabyte) won't support - I've asked - the tpm connections on it (because it's too old, but that's my assumption: m/b was new running win7 64bit back in 2015).

There was only one minidump file - possibly because I'd run cclean during the morning and cleaned out a range of files. But this file is only 676Kb: 081722-6828-01.dmp

It's in my public one drive folder here (the only file in it) https://onedrive.live.com/?id=F258AB2984C226A1%21107&cid=F258AB2984C226A1

David

Update

it happened again just after I posted this. the blue screen error message was "Kmode exception not handled" and the related minidump file is 081722-6734-01.dmp. It is also in the public folder above.

Update 2

3rd event, the error message was "memory management', and the minidump file is 081722-7828-01.dmp, and it is also in that public folder.

Another one . .

the error message was "critical structure corruption", and the dump file is 081722-7171-01.dmp: again, in the public folder.

In case you wonder, the time gap between the first event for the dump files and the latest 3 is that the PC was off whilst I did chores.

Hi Bernard,

Unfortunately, the restore point did not fix the issue. About 15 mins after I last posted, it BSOD'd again, and this time it would not recover/re-boot. It got partly into the boot rotating dots and bombed out. Auto repair did not work either. Tried this sveral times - same result each time. Despair. A lot of thinking about why? And there was an answer, described below FYI

A desktop it is, and the C (and boot) drive is an SSD, installed Jan 2018 and now 4.5 years old, with daily usage since then under win7 and, from mid-2020, win10.  It certainly speeded up things like AV scans, backups and other time lengthy and compute intensive activities.  And at the time, there was extensive articles on SSD usage, since price was becoming very competitive, and tech advisors were strongly recommending using them.  Those articles explained the memory structure and how it worked: in essence, the nand cells destroy data on read, and that has to be written back to save it: much like the old style wired magnetic core memories (that I can remember that far back dates me a bit). And nand cells have a write life. So the advice was, when using an SSD, disable regular memory intensive functions like de-fragmenting, since with a random access memory like SSD it contributed nothing to performance and very likely had a negative effect on the write life of the memory cells in the SSD.  So, I did that: turned off scheduling for defrag for the whole system.  The failure pattern for an SSD was theorised to be random, as compared to an HDD (which as a serial device would usually fail catastrophically).

And last week what I was seeing seemed to be random failures (BSOD's) every 15-20 minutes, but the machine after creating a minidump file was rebootable.  Over 2 days I had about 20 of these events, and every time the app in use was different and the error message was also different. You, the MS community, examined the dump files, and explicated a cause (Ntkrnlmp.exe) and the most likely fix given what had not been happening to various resourcs was a restore.  So did a restore to the last one before the events began, and it completed Ok and re-booted.  See post above. But failed again BSOD 15 mins later, and this time it would not re-boot, many tries.  My Acronis bootable recovery disks did not work on the tower, but worked fine on an operable laptop. Several frustrating days.

Reflecting on the SSD advisories from years ago, I recalled that I had a spare brand new Samsung SSD. If it did not work, I had lost nothing. So I installed that, and behold! my Acronis bootable disks work again.  And I was able to initialise, format and create the active partition for the OS (the DD12 disk), and then boot and start TI2021 (the TI2021 disk) and recover the 1 Aug backup, a copy of which was deliberately on one of the other HDD in the tower, for just this sort of eventuality.  More time getting the boot priorities in the BIOS correct, and the desktop is live again. And after 3 days of use, no BSOD's.

Clearly a desperate hypothesis re the original SSD was correct:  bits of it were experiencing cell death, and I wondered why? It was a well known Kingston brand and  at 4.5 years old it should not have done that.  In fact, most ssd's from years ago would still not be into the cell death zone;  one user I know of who was an early adopter (well before me) still had not experienced this phenomenon. Thinking about that I realised that I'd been doing weekly AV scans, and since win10, for 2 years I'd been using Defender to do a whole of system AV scan once a week - and that by Defenders count that went to 2.75 million files read and tested over 2 hours.  Quite probably a worse task for the SSD than a monthly de-fragment.  And the BSOD's began the morning after the last weekly AV scan.

That's the story. So, my recommendation; when using an SSD, don't do whole of PC AV scans unless there is an infection reason to do it.  this would apply to windows defender and any 3rd party AV application - a concentrated read pattern from each type of program is the same.